Lynn Marie Stanek was 26 when authorities said she sold 2 ounces of cocaine to an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency agent for $3,500 in a motel in Salem and arranged to deliver more later that night, according to a report from The Oregonian at the time.

A judge sentenced Stanek, who authorities allege was armed at the time of her arrest, to six months in jail and five years probation, on the condition that she live in a community treatment center for one year after her release.

Stanek, now 53, emailed The Oregonian with a statement, writing that was “stunned” when she received a call from the Office of the Pardon Attorney, part of the U.S. Justice Department. She first applied for the pardon in 1998, about 12 years after her conviction.

She was one of 17 people who were issued presidential pardons on Friday, largely for minor and nonviolent crimes.

Stanek, who lived in Salem at the time of her arrest, now runs Ambience Staging Designs, which decorates homes before they are put on the market, and is raising a teenage son in Tualatin.

In her statement, Stanek said she has lived with the stigma of “convicted felon” for years. Presidential pardons do not expunge records, but they restore various rights that were lost through a felony conviction.

“This pardon does not absolve me of my crime, but it does allow me to move beyond my past in a tangible, legal and personally meaningful way,” Stanek wrote. She thanked Obama and said she was “relieved to be moving beyond this chapter of my life.”

When she was sentenced in 1986, Stanek tearfully told a judge her arrest saved her from a destructive lifestyle, according to The Oregonian report. She had been arrested with her fiancé at the time and two other men. After initially pleading innocent, she changed her plea to guilty on charges of using a phone to arrange the drug deal.

She has obtained a master’s degree, married, had a child, divorced, worked in various careers and started her own business since the crime, she wrote. But paperwork never forgets, she said, adding that virtually no application is complete without a question about felony convictions.